Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 17

The man across the street from Andrea Costanza’s building was almost invisible in the darkness of the unlit doorway of a small cutlery shop that had closed hours earlier, its windows protected by roll-down shutters, its door by a heavy iron accordion grille that was securely fastened with a heavy padlock. The street was quiet — no one had passed by in the last fifteen minutes, and only a single taxi had appeared, dropping its fare three doors down, then continuing on its way. Several times the man had left the doorway to walk along the sidewalk, checking the building from every angle.

An old building, eight floors.

No doorman.

An outer door leading to a vestibule where there was a bank of mailboxes, a panel of buttons, and a small speaker.

No security camera, at least not that he could see.

According to the panel of buzzers, Andrea Costanza lived on the fifth floor, in Apartment E.

He’d watched the building for half an hour. No one had entered; no one left. Then, in the space of ten minutes, seven people had arrived: two couples, then three single people. All of them had pressed a buzzer about a third of the way down the panel.

Ten minutes later, the man crossed the street, pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, entered the vestibule and quickly punched four of the buzzers.

As the speaker crackled to life and an annoyed voice demanded to know who was there, the inner door buzzed and the man pulled it open and stepped through. A moment later it closed behind him, cutting off the sound of the voice that was still crackling through the speaker.

Ignoring the elevator, the man found the staircase and started upward. Coming to the fifth floor, he paused, listening. He could hear nothing.

He opened the fire door a crack, and listened again.

Still nothing.

He opened it a little further, and peered out. The corridor was empty.

The man could count six doors from where he stood, but the identifying letters on them were invisible. He would have no choice but to leave the shelter of the stairwell, even if only for a few seconds. But still he lingered, like a skittish animal that senses danger nearby, but can’t quite identify its source. He was just about to slip out into the hallway, when suddenly he froze. For a second he wasn’t even sure why he’d stopped, but then he heard it — a faint clanking sound. A second after that, he knew what it was: the elevator. Fading back into the stairwell, he pulled the door nearly shut, and waited. The sound grew louder, then suddenly stopped. He could hear the door being opened, but it was muffled enough that he knew the elevator had stopped on another floor.

A moment later the sound started again, and began receding as the elevator began its descent back to the lobby.

Now!

The man pulled the fire door open, slipped through, and moved quickly down the hall. Apartment E was the third one down, on the backside of the building.

Perfect.

Less than a quarter of a minute after he’d left the fire stairs, the man was back in their shelter, and once again climbing. When he came to the top he paused again, this time to pull a black ski mask from the pocket of his coat. Pulling the ski mask on, he opened the door and stepped out onto the roof.

Andrea Costanza glared at the screen of the little notebook computer she’d set up on her kitchen table. She’d already called Nate Rosenberg three times, and he’d walked her through all the steps that should have gotten her connected to her computer at the office, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t make it work.

“Do you want me to come over?” Nate asked the last time she called.

“No, I don’t want you to come over,” Andrea replied more harshly than she should have. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me, and I’m mad at that quack you seem to think so highly of, and I’m really, really mad at this dumb computer. I’m sure it’s something perfectly simple, and I’ll feel like a complete idiot tomorrow when you show me what I’m doing wrong. I think I’m just going to give it up, turn on the TV, and veg out for the rest of the evening. See you tomorrow.”

She’d fed Chloe, who’d expressed her usual amount of contempt for the dog food Andrea insisted on feeding her just because she happened to be a dog, and fixed her own supper, which she ate under Chloe’s accusatorial gaze, resisting the temptation to share even the smallest part of her meal with her pet.

“Feed her human food, and kill her,” the vet had warned. “Schnauzers have weak kidneys, and if you give her nothing but kibble, she’ll be fine. Anything else, and she’ll wag her tail right up until the day she dies. Which won’t take long.”

So she’d gone through the dinner ritual, with Chloe ignoring her bowl of kibble as long as there was any hope at all of begging a scrap from her mistress, then munching discontentedly while Andrea did up the dishes.

After she cleaned up the dishes, she snapped on the TV, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t concentrate.

The computer wouldn’t let her.

She shut it off and put it away, but ten minutes later she had it set up again on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and was endlessly repeating everything Nate Rosenberg had instructed her to do.

She called a help line, made her way through the endless tree that was supposed to save time, and sat on hold for forty-five minutes before finally talking to a man who quickly demonstrated that he knew even less about computers than she did.

Going back to the control panel, she stared stupidly at the icons that seemed to hold less and less meaning with every minute that went by. Just forget it, she told herself. Just put it away, and do something else. But even as she formed the words in her mind, she was already clicking on an icon, and suddenly there it was: a box asking her to enter her password.

When Chloe began whining, Andrea was so close to achieving her goal that she ignored the little dog until Chloe suddenly jumped up next to her mistress, planted her paws on the back of the sofa, and began to bark at the open window behind Andrea.

“For heaven’s sake, Chloe,” Andrea said, her eyes still fastened to the screen of the notebook. “There’s nothing out—”

But even as she spoke the words she saw a faint shadow pass across the screen, and she felt her skin crawl as she knew that there was, indeed, something beyond the window.

She started to turn, but it was already too late. A powerful arm slipped around her neck from the left, and she started to scream.

For the second time, she was an instant too late. The arm jerked her backward, forcing her against the back of the sofa, and closing her throat so quickly that the only sound that escaped was a muted gasp of surprise.

Her hands came up, her fingers closing on the arm, and she began thrashing, trying to free herself.

The arm held her fast, and she felt her lungs begin to burn.

Chloe’s barking had faded to a whimper, and she’d scuttled off the couch to cower against the far wall, her eyes fastened on her mistress, her body pressed to the floor. Andrea tried to reach out toward the little dog, but now her vision was blurring, and she felt her limbs weakening as her blood ran out of oxygen. With her vision starting to fail, she reached back, trying to gouge the face of her attacker, but all she felt was some kind of soft material.

The burning in her lungs worsened, and her arms fell away from the man’s head as all her instincts focused on escaping from the crushing pressure on her throat. She clawed frantically, scratching at the heavy material that covered the imprisoning arm, but even as she struggled, she felt the last of her strength ebbing away.

I’m going to die, she thought. Suddenly she felt the man’s right hand on the side of her head, cupping her ear. I’m going to die right here in—

With a quick, hard shove, the man snapped Andrea Costanza’s neck, and in an instant her hands dropped away from his arm and her body went limp.

The man held on to Andrea’s lifeless body for nearly another full minute. Only when he was certain that she was dead did he release her from his grip, and her body collapsed on the sofa like a broken doll, her arms flopped by her side, her head lolling on her shoulder. Except for the odd angle at which her head was turned, she could almost have fallen asleep.

The man, having never fully entered the room at all, eased the window to the fire escape closed, and quickly began climbing back toward the roof.

An unnatural stillness fell over the apartment, and for a long time Chloe stayed where she was, her eyes fixed on her mistress’s lifeless body. Finally she rose to her feet and padded across the floor toward Andrea. She put her forepaws on the sofa and began licking at Andrea’s hand, then climbed up to lick at her face. Only when she was exhausted from her efforts to bring her mistress back to life did the little dog finally press herself close to Andrea’s body, curl herself into a tight ball, and fall into a restless sleep.

On the floor below, the party went on, no one having seen or heard anything at all.